The Death of Literature – Replying to Lars Iyer’s Manifesto

Nude in your hot tub, facing the abyss (A literary manifesto after the end of Literature and Manifestos) | The White Review. Ever since I was a kid in high school I was interested in cultural and intellectual history. What impressed me was the constant ebb and flow of ideas and of thinkers and artists seeking answers to important questions of the time. Each serious work of art was a critique of what came before and the measure of greatness was always the ability to surpass one's masters and contribute Read more [...]

‘Religious Freedom’ Issues and Pederasty in the Catholic Church

'Religious Freedom' Issues, Part 2: Catholics and Contraception - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education. I was having it out with one Mavprof, an apologist for Rush Limbaugh and all things wing-nut on Chronicle.com. I turned Limbaugh's medicine on him over the issue of contraception and the moral authority of the Catholic priesthood by reminding him of the pederasty scandals and the Catholic hierarchy's cover up of them. I got this from the author of the post. ____________________________________________________________ Bonalibro I Read more [...]

Death of Literature – Nude in Your Hot Tub, Facing the Abyss

Nude in your hot tub, facing the abyss (A literary manifesto after the end of Literature and Manifestos) | The White Review. Having written my reader's response to Lars Iyer's Dogma, below, I decided to peruse his manifesto on the death of Literature. I intend to refrain from comment on it until I have perused others on the subject over the years, but I just want to say, by way of an immediate reaction to it. that I think he is both right and wrong on the subject. Since I was in college, some forty Read more [...]

Reforms for the New Upper Class – Charles Murray – NYTimes.com

Reforms for the New Upper Class - NYTimes.com. Charles Murray's proposed solutions to the problems of inequality and upper class advantage are woefully short of what is needed. He knows it. Yet, despite the fact that they would have no effect, the NYTimes printed his worthless essay anyway, in contradiction to to its mission statement, All the News that's Fit to Print.  Nowhere does Murray mention such measures as distributing property taxes evenly between school districts, or the real biggie, Read more [...]

Dogma, by Lars Iyer

Lars Iyer is a well known figure of the literary blogosphere, and as a relative neophyte in the space, I only recently came across his name, but liking what I sampled of Dogma, I decided to give it a full read. I like to keep up, when I can, with new fiction, especially that beyond the realm of typical academic fiction, which I generally find too cloistered. It reflects the austerity in Britain following the financial crisis and its similarity to the great depression. It reminded me, as I read it, Read more [...]

These Dreams of You: A Novel by Steve Erickson

 Steve Erickson's ninth novel, These Dreams of You, traces the travails of a contemporary American family following their adoption of an Ethiopian child, their struggle to keep themselves housed and fed when both partners are unemployed, and their quest for the child's birth mother. Beginning with the election of Barrack Obama, it asks the question of what our concept of America is, and what must be done to heal the lesions in the body politic inflicted by slavery and segregation.  It resolves Read more [...]

Renegade — Henry Miller and the Making of ‘Tropic of Cancer.’ — Why do men revel in the degradation of women?

Renegade — Henry Miller and the Making of ‘Tropic of Cancer.’   Why do men revel in the degradation of women? Jeannette Winterson's review of Frederick Turner's book on Henry Miller ends with a question that is seldom discussed in the bounds of polite society.  Why do men revel in the degradation of women?  I guess you'd have to be a woman to ask it. Comedian Henny Youngman has much to say on this topic.  The blues speaks to it a lot, too; the withering contempt that familiarity brings, Read more [...]

R.I.P Etta James

I was at Pigfoot in Northeast Washington several years ago, with a friend, to hear the house band. They announced that a lady named Etta James, whom I had, sadly, never heard of, was in the audience and would join them to sing a few numbers. I don't remember what she sang. I don't remember how long she sang. What I do remember was the excitement she generated and the effect she had on me, who hadn't listened to anything but classical music in several years, which was magical. Here she is on youtube Read more [...]

Willard “Mittens” Romney is a Plutomaniac

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/opinion/brooks-the-wealth-issue.html?ref=opinion When I was a scholarship student in prep school I remember seeing a lower form student emerge from his parent's top line Benz wearing a luxurious fur coat that would probably fit him for a season or two. I wasn't jealous or envious of him, but I did despise him because he had such an air of entitlement about him. It was my first exposure to such people and I thought, what had he done to deserve such a coat, and why Read more [...]

What Happened to Standards of Excellence?

I'm all for raising standards of excellence, in ethics, politics, morals, education. Especially standards of excellence in writing, which is what I attempt to do. I write fiction and I am always appalled by how little vocabulary people know today, even people who call themselves writers, or are published as writers. The multi-syllabic word is almost beyond most people's understanding. Shakespeare fused the high Norman French to the vulgar Anglo-Saxon, giving us the basis of modern English, yet it Read more [...]